hi all sifus here..

abt my guitar..
the height of the string from the fret on the 12th fret is abt 0.3~0.4cm..
is this normal??
shud i lower it or wat??
thx..

This post has been edited by x-crusader: Oct 19 2008, 09:02 PM

You meant cm right?

Somewhere from 1.3mm to 3mm is passable depends on what you play. Lower for shred/metal, higher for blues. That's just a general idea, you can set it to as high/low as you wanted as long as you're comfortable.

for me i just set up with my own comfortability.

yea..
cm..
changed...
errmm..
its a acoustic guitar..
oso normal ahh??
i found it a lil bit high for playing fingerstyle on the upper fret...
hhmm..

if too low, for the lower frets will cause buzzing sound. coz at the lower frets, the strings will touch the fretboard.
anyway it really depends on your guitar. if its an expensive one, sure made much better than others. so it would be closer to the fret board at the upper frets too, making it easier to play

ic...
normal huh..
hhmm..
well..
i tried to lower the neck..
to lower it is turn clockwise is it??
but y.. i felt it tight when turning it?

turning clockwise shall bend your neck AGAINST the string tension, meaning that the neck will bend backward. As a consequence, the strings will get closer to the fretboard.

Don't forget to loosen the strings a notch when doing so.

The strings have a higher action on classical guitar, which can be a little shocking for an electric guitar player Especially the "nylon" strings guitar...

i got a question.. my e.guitar string high were 0.5cm on both high and low string..

izzit normal? how low can i set it up? had being practicing the `god knows` song and it seems pretty hard to play it with 0.5cm high string >.<

what are you saying ??
of course you do !!
the string action depends partly on the trussrod !! Trussrod is not the only parameter, OK, but it has a serious influence.
tightening the trussrod will bring the strings closer to the neck between the 1st fret till the 12th fret, approximatively. Whereas the higher frets are not impacted.


Not true. You can do more than 1/4th, depending on how tight is the trussrod in the 1st place.
But the fine tuning will be done with very little increment.. because once you're reaching the correct setting, every 1/10th of a turn will have a drastic effect on the playability of the guitar.

mine were 0.3 near the nut and 0.6 near the humburker

izzit high? im not tat comfy with the setting ><

are those the correct way to measure the gap between strings and fretboard?

teach me, im seriously clueless!

Quick solution: Send it for a setup

Now all of you can stop arguing bout who's right.

Everything on the guitar works together to affect the playability, yes the truss rod functions mainly to keep the neck straight, but that doesn't mean you can't tune it to optimize a compromise between string tension counter and string action.

There's nothing wrong with tightening 1/4 turns if you know how lose or tight the truss rod already is, but that comes with experience. The safer way but less efficient is to go by 1/8 intervals that way you can't severely over tighten or over relieve the neck.

Note here, most luthiers go for a straight neck first, once it's dead straight, they work the nut and bridge then they go back to the neck again. The process usually repeats itself until the luthier himself is satisfied.

@TS
If you have very shallow knowledge about truss rods and basic setups best you go straight to a tech and get it setup if you want better playability.
A large percentage of warped/bowed necks come from people who try to setup their guitar without properly considering all factors.

batuapi & sean,

Sorry if my words sounded a little harsh I'm just discussing the issue...
It's very difficult for me to asses how straight is the neck. I could just look at it in every different angles, I would still have no clue whether it's straight or bowed in a certain direction. But by pressing both the first fret and the 12th fret of the first string, I can know if the string is too far off the frets or not.

And if it's too far --> trussrod is very loose.

Now, I agree whe you say that the trussrod is not the main parameter to tune the action, BUT it's one of the first thing to check. I mean, if the TR is loose, there is no point sweating on the bridge..

ic..
thx you all..
i was trying to learn to do minor setups on my guitar..
and it seems its impossible to do it on own coz it contains huge knowledge in it..
ty all..